For a man whose mother inspired global love, it's surprising the extent to which Harry is doing the opposite.

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It just hit me. Diana was loved, really loved, by millions. Look at the palace flowers after she died. And here is her son, throwing his anger and hurt about lavishly on a global scale. I wish someone really talented theraputically could help him better process the pain of losing his mother.

Have you listened or read his book ? He explains his situation, his life , his feelings , and his actions in there . I totally understand him. Good for him he has spoke up and stuck up for his family . Diana was very unhappy and hunted down so for Harry to want to find happiness and some normality for his family is totally understandable. I think he his great and she is lovely.

At the time, lots and lots of people thought Diana was a very troubled soul and many were not particularly sympathetic about the way she behaved. Since her death, she has acquired some kind of media sanctioned sainthood that really didn't reflect how she was viewed my many in her life..

This. Diana’s death turned people’s opinion of her around dramatically. I like Harry. He has growing up to do for sure but I believe he is a credible individual who grew up traumatised in a dysfunctional family. I actually believe he is more genuine than he rest of them put together and I wish him and his family well.

I think they're very similar.

The flowers when Diana died didn't mean she was "globally loved"- the same people who took flowers were buying tabloids slagging her off just days before. She had some committed fans, as Harry does, but most people didn't love her in any sense. The collective outpouring of ersatz grief when Diana died was more about people wanting to be part of the soap opera than anything to do with loving her. Just as, if Harry died tomorrow, people would take flowers and sob about him being prince of hearts, who were happily slagging him off today. What the public doesn't tend to do is examine its own role in all this unhappiness.

Completely agree, her untimely death has created some ridiculous myth about Diana, she wasn’t as universally adored at the time as now is made out - rose tinted glasses and all that.

I think people reacted to Diana death with guilt rather than grief. They bought the magazines that hounded her.

Harry is a dim witted fool who is mad with jealousy. The book title says it all.

Very good point, @StClare101 . I remember at the time people thought she was a bit erratic, spinning around every which way. The Dodi thing was not by all accounts very serious (on her part). The tabloids and the general public were not particularly complimentary about her lifestyle - nor Charles’s, come to that.

When she died so tragically I agree there was a Gulp moment that she had led a very random goldfish-bowl existence for the past 17 years and so there was an instant “guilty”rehabilitation.

The Cult of Diana was definitely built up posthumously. She was the object (and sometimes willing participant) of a mass media experiment throughout her adult life as far as I can interpret it. It created an appetite for reality TV as we know it today. She provoked strong emotions but they were pretty garbled at that point. There was only the strong emotional pull to acknowledge and participate in a mass public ritual.

It could be a primal response to our hunter-gatherer dna which is largely being unused in the traditional way. Humans still have an urge to gather and stalk and feast on prey.

Arf at ‘globally loved’.

Her death merely started an unprecedented wave of grief tourism.

Read his book. It’s a measured and sensitive read. There’s no ‘throwing’ of anything.

The media absolutely crucified Diana for years.

I think the death of Diana was the beginning of many of the British public abandoning the "stiff upper lip". I do remember at the time being really puzzled and a little disturbed as to why people who did not know her at all apart from what they read in the press were wailing and sobbing. She had no effect whatsoever on the lives of the majority of the British people.

Each to their own I suppose but I think this was also the start of the obsession with celebrity culture and with the arrival of reality TV and social media that got worse.

I didn't know Diana apart from what I saw in the media and from watching some documentaries but my personal opinion, from what I have seen, is that she wanted to be loved and do good for people but also had her own problems. She wasn't a saint, just a person who was the victim of her circumstances. I think that Harry has built up her image and imagines that Meghan is some sort of recreation of her. I personally don't see any similarity between them at all.

Frankly I think for the sake of his peace of mind he should stop slagging of his family in public and get some proper therapy for his obviously unresolved grief issues. I don't think he is a bad person just a very mixed up and bitter one.

He hasn’t slagged off his family . He’s told his truth of his experience of things and his feelings . Nothing wrong with that .

Maybe "slagging off" is the wrong expression. He isn't just telling "his truth". He is revealing personal family matters to the world at large and I can't see how that is going to help him. He may feel better now but at what cost to his relationship with his family and the upset to those he is talking about.

I would say the same about anyone who writes a memoir. These days everything has to be picked apart in public. I'm not saying you should suppress things but I do wonder how much this will help him in the long run.

Diana wasn't particularly popular at the time of her death. People were sick of seeing her cavorting round Europe with a playboy and she'd been dropping ridiculous teasers about what was coming next.

Her untimely death was a jolt to the public and kick-started the saint myth but she was shaping up to be a loose cannon.

I think it would have been a completely different narrative had she lived and aged.

We all felt a lot of sympathy for the young boys who walked behind they mums coffin, Harry's dickish behaviour over the years, the nazi costume, racial slurs, drunken parties, drugs, women, bad behaviour at school etc. was explained away as a cheeky chap, he's growing up, has a lot to deal with, the palace covered up for him, he was protected and sold to us as a 'lovable rouge' and he has always been so incredibly popular, the public's favourite prince.

He spent very little time with either of his parents, (and then lost his mum altogether) raised by nanny's and then in boarding school, a brutal environment. Spoilt and indulged, never facing the consequences of his actions. Always loved always popular always forgiven. Completely pandered to.

He believed he would always remain popular with the public and Meghan would instantly be popular too, it came as a terrible shock to him when the RF had their reservations about her and the media were so critical of her (petty even) he'd never experienced negativity directed at him quite so much, having the criticism aimed at Meghan particularly triggered him.

He started throwing his weight around, making demands, becoming difficult, refusing to tow the line (making it very difficult for Meghan to settle into her new role, alienating her and himself from the support they needed) his final move was to request the chance to step away from royal duties, he wanted to be half in and half out (all the perks with very little work) he got a hard NO for the RF, the queen stripped him of his honorary military titles, he lost tax payer funded security.

This is when he lost his shit, started writing his book, started recording for Netflix, made a deal with Oprah...full on adult temper tantrum. Unbridled fury at his family for refusing to concede to his demands, bitterness that the public and press were judging and mocking them.

I think he's always been a dick, the quintessential spoilt brat - we're only just seeing it now. The line in his book that speaks louder to me about his character - more than anything else he's said in interviews or in writing 'I took it all in: his familiar scowl, which had always been his default in dealings with me, his alarming baldness, more advanced than my own; his famous resemblance to Mummy, which was fading with time'

What a nasty and bitter little man, trying to mock William and disassociate him from Diana, when in facts it's Harry who is now so far removed from his mother, the woman who 'inspired global love'

Diana was not easy either. Now there, I said it.

She had a very difficult life, when she was young and as party of the royal family. But she was not a saint either, and quite difficult to deal with it seemed.

I’ve read the book and it’s quite telling how he relates a memory of Diana from his childhood. They’re approached by a suitor, he woos her with jewellery which she accepts. He tries to paint it as if to say she was so fawned over. But actually ends up saying she openly flirted with random men in front of her children. He also inadvertently gives the impression there was a conveyer belt for her too, just like his own conveyor belt of women.

Agree.

She made some questionable lifestyle choices; blaming the paparazzi is a cop out on a number of levels.

"The collective outpouring of ersatz grief when Diana died was more about people wanting to be part of the soap opera than anything to do with loving her."

Very well said. It was a collective experience, more than adoration.

I understand his reasons but not the rationale. Leaving the country to have a normal life away from the press from the country, then… selling every secret out so he can attract far more attention from the press than he had ever before.

Celebrities who want privacy normally achieve it by keeping their mouth shut, the queen managed that way. He is doing the oposite and enjoying the show.

I feel the whole thing is nauseating. I’d would openly say I have always supported the monarchy, but if the rumours are true that Charles will have harry and Meghan at his coronation , then we need a referendum and we need to abolish them.

if it’s true , he’s a weak king putting his destructive son first over the future of rhe monarchy . The attacks harry and Meghan have launched, the utter shame of it, the doing it for millions and millions, of wanting to capitalise on their titles is sickening , and if Charles has them there it shows his priority is his son and capitulating to him.

I hope just one of them has the integrity to say this isn’t ok. And for them to stay far away, if they can’t do that, then the monarchy has to end and it has to end now.

I wasn't a Diana fan.

I totally did not get the public wailing and crying.

I said at the time it was sad for a mother to die when her children were young but it would be sad if she was living on a council estate with her kids in the local comp.

She was far from being a saint, she did some charity work but not that much.
She jumped on the mines bandwagon long after others had been campaigning.

I don’t know why people get so wound up about H&M.
Where is the outrage at the constant lies in the media?
Harry is telling what he sees as his story. If he’s embroidered the details so what. The royal family have carried on quietly and I don’t think any intelligent people will think worse of them.
Goodness the tabloids in the 80’s released more stories through phone hacking than Harry will ever tell.

Was she?
As I recall she, certainly became "Saint Diana" after her death ,but public opinion prior to her death was very mixed
also Charles was massively unpopular during the.80,s and I dont think Camilla would have been accepted as Queen Consort 20 years ago yet here we are
even the Queen was criticized massively for the way it was perceived Diana,s death was handled by the royal family
People certainly have short memories.

‘Inspired global love’ 😂
If Mills and Boone did mumsnet.